In this study, the relationship between latent constructs of phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) were investigated and related to later measures of reading and spelling in children learning to read in different alphabetic writing systems (i.e., Norwegian/Swedish vs. English). 750 U.S./Australian children and 230 Scandinavian children were followed longitudinally between kindergarten and 2nd grade. PA and RAN were measured in kindergarten and Grade 1, while word recognition, phonological decoding, and spelling were measured in kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. In general, high stability was observed for the various reading and spelling measures, such that little additional variance was left open for PA and RAN. However, results demonstrated that RAN was more related to reading than spelling across orthographies, with the opposite pattern shown for PA. In addition, tests of measurement invariance show that the factor loadings of each observed indicator on the latent PA factor was the same across U.S./Australia and Scandinavia. Similar findings were obtained for RAN. In general, tests of structural invariance show that models of early literacy development are highly transferable across languages.

In this study, predictors of reading and spelling difficulties among children learning more transparent (Norwegian/Swedish) and less transparent (English) orthographies were examined longitudinally from preschool through Grade 2 using parallel versions of tests. A series of logistic regression analysis indicated three main findings. First, phonological awareness as a predictor of reading difficulties in the Scandinavian sample was time-limited to Grade 1, but remained as a significant predictor in the English-speaking sample. Second, phonological awareness predicted spelling difficulties similarly across orthographies. Third, preschool and kindergarten RAN was a significant predictor of reading and spelling difficulties at both Grades 1 and 2 across orthographies. The authors conclude that phonological awareness diminishes as a predictor of reading difficulties in transparent orthographies after the first years of schooling, that RAN is a better long term predictor of reading difficulties, and that phonological awareness is associated with spelling difficulties similarly in transparent and opaque orthographies.

The importance of cognitive and language skills on reading and spelling development were investigated in a cross-linguistic longitudinal study of 737 Englishspeaking children (US/Australia) and 169 Scandinavian children (Norway/Sweden) from preschool to Kindergarten and Grade 1. The results revealed that phonological awareness and print knowledge were the strongest predictors of early reading and spelling across orthographies. The contribution from rapid naming to literacy development was low in Kindergarten, but similar to that of phonological awareness and print knowledge in Grade 1. The present study identified a significant difference across orthographies in the effects of print knowledge and general verbal ability on spelling in Kindergarten. However, this pattern was explained by cultural rather than orthographic differences. The results indicate that cognitive and language skills underlying early reading and spelling development are similar across alphabetic orthographies.Most research focusing on cognitive and language prerequisites for literacy acquisition and the development of reading and spelling skills has been conducted in English. However, the fact that different alphabetic orthographies vary considerably in the regularity between letters and sounds suggests that the relations between prereading skills and reading and spelling development as well as the course of early literacy acquisition might differ across orthographies (e.g. Joshi & Aaron, 2006). In exploring literacy development between regular and irregular orthographies, numerous studies have examined levels of reading and spelling skills at different ages (e.g.